This ought to drive the wild one's price right through the roof, he thought smugly. And if reporting this bribe and all didn't earn him a trained girl of his own, nothing would. Megwyn was already fading from his mind. He began to daydream, glimpses of the concubines he'd escorted across the trade routes flitting enticingly through his memory. Probably he'd even get his pick. He'd always fancied one of those tiny little black-haired creatures, the ones that danced so well. He smiled with anticipation. Or maybe one of the ones with hair like an elven lady and skin like snow. Or maybe a little red-haired she-cat...
Perhaps this day's work would not turn out so badly after all!
The huge, rose-pink auction room was like a bowl, with Shana at the bottom of it. Rose-pink light came from the ceiling, the same directionless light as in all the places she'd been so far. In the past twenty days, she hadn't once seen the sun.
She stood all alone on the auction platform, her heart pounding so loudly she could scarcely hear, half-fainting with fear. Above and all around her were hundreds of avaricious faces, some human, some elven, all of them heartlessly watching her as the auctioneer described her origin and ascribed abilities to her she had no notion she possessed.
'Take a good look at her, gentles and lords! Strong, limber, she fights like desert whirlwind, but responds like a well-trained hound! A jewel of the sands, she needs a knowing master to bring out the fire lying smoldering beneath her surface! Look at those muscles, those sculptured bones, there's not one ounce of fat on that girl, and nothing that doesn't please the eye! Imagine her spellbound as your personal guard! Imagine her fighting and winning in the arena, with the skills of a born desert killer!'
The auctioneer prodded her until she moved, reluctantly. There was nowhere to hide from all those staring eyes; she shivered with cold, then flushed with heat, as the auctioneer made her move all around the platform while he continued his set-speech.
There were a few faces in the crowd that she recognized; most notably, the blond-haired, cruel-faced man who had stood by while his companion killed Meg. He was in the second tier of seats, with the wealthiest of the buyers. He waited as patiently as a scorpion at midday, standing just behind an elven lord in blue livery similar to his own, but richer, and more heavily ornamented with silver braid. She stared into those colorless, cold eyes, mesmerized.
The auctioneer brought his speech to a close; with a start, the first bid from the cruel man's overlord shocked Shana to her senses. She looked away, her heart racing, her throat tight, her head swimming.
Bids came quickly after that; Shana had a hard time keeping track of them at first. It seemed that most of the people in the auction room had come here to bid on
There wasn't a single friendly face in the lot. Each one, elven or human, seemed colder and harder than the last. Her eyes followed the bids from man to man, hoping for a sign of pity, if nothing else, and finding nothing there but greed, excitement, or cold calculation.
Except for the cruel man. Now he began to show some reaction. The elven lord with him kept bidding steadily, and soon every other bid was his. As the bidding began to fall off, and fewer of the bidders continued responding to the challenge, the cruel man licked his lips, as if he were anticipating the taste of something pleasing.
Shana watched him in terror-stricken fascination. He looked straight into her eyes when he saw that she was looking at him, deliberately licked his lips again, and smiled.
That smile nearly dropped her to the platform; her heart stopped, and her breath seemed to freeze in her chest. It was the most sadistic smile she had ever seen.
It was the same smile he'd worn as his underlings beat poor Meg to death; every cry she'd made had caused a flicker of that smile to cross his face.
One by one the other bidders dropped out, and his smile broadened. Finally, there was silence in answer to his master's final bid, and he grinned broadly.
'Going once!'
Shana closed her eyes, and tried to will herself to die, right there on the spot. I
'Going twice!'
Then another voice rang out.
'Three hundred!'
Shana's eyes flew open, and the crowd turned with a murmur, to see a sandy-haired human sitting inconspicuously in the upper tiers, standing up to indicate the bid was his.
A bid that topped the last by a hundred gold pieces.
The crowd noise rose to a hum. The auctioneer frowned. 'I'll have to verify you have that much, bondling,' he began...then the man moved further into the light, showing his livery. The auctioneer paled.
'Forgive me,' he babbled. 'Lord Dyran's man is welcome to make any bid he pleases.'
'And I bid three hundred,' the fellow said coldly.
The auctioneer, now sweating freely, turned to the cruel man's elven master. 'Lord Harrlyn?'
The elven lord looked up at the man in the top tier, and shrugged, his pale gold hair rippling with the movement. 'Far be it from me or my Lord to deny Lord Dyran his pleasure. The prize is his.'
He sat down; the cruel man sat an instant later, his face gone cold and closed-in...but Shana got a glimpse of his eyes, and what she saw there was enough to make her vow never, ever to allow herself to fall into his hands.
'Going once?' The auctioneer paused, but no more eleventh-hour bids were forthcoming. 'Going twice...going three times!
One of the bondlings came up onto the platform and guided her off; he snapped a cord onto her collar as soon as they reached the bottom of the stairs.
She woke up even more when the bondling handed the cord to the man who had bought her in exchange for the heavy pouch he tossed carelessly at the young man. For the first time she got a good look at the man, and her heart sank.
He had a proud, haughty expression; his thick, sandy hair had streaks of gray in it and the lines in his squarish face matched that gray. But they were not lines that smiling had etched there; they were frown lines, and the crow's feet around his opaque brown eyes made Shana think of an ill-tempered lizard.
His livery was richer than the elven lord's; all of silks and velvets, gold and crimson, with real gems winking from his collar...
Like the collar she'd found, only not as pretty.
'Come along, girl.' A tug at her leash sent her stumbling forward a pace, stubbing her bare toe. The man lifted a lip in disdain, sneering at her and her clumsiness. 'Why my Lord wants this thing, I'll never know,' he said in a confiding voice to the young bondling. 'She doesn't seem very useful. But one doesn't question one's orders.'
The young man nodded warily and shoved Shana a little, in the direction she'd been tugged. 'Go with him, girl,' he said harshly, as if he was glad to see the last of her. 'You belong to Lord Dyran now.'
The man jerked at her leash a second time, then turned abruptly, and began striding down the hall that ran under the auctioneer's platform. She hurried after to keep him from hauling her forward again. As they emerged into the main hallway, she rubbed her neck where the collar had chafed it, wondering if she hadn't exchanged a bad fate for a worse one.
Dyran must be an elven lord so powerful the others wouldn't bid against him. That meant his magic was much more powerful than theirs. What did he want with her?
He surely wanted the secret of the dragon-skin. And if his magic was that much better...
She began to shiver, although the man who held her leash took no notice of the fact. He simply kept walking, after a single backward glance at her.
